CommentaryRarely has there been an artist who has adhered to his motif selection and painting style more steadfastly than Otto Mueller. Only over the years starting in 1910, did hee gingerly adapt his style once he had become a member of the Brücke group. Accompanying him on this path were fellow artists as role models, such as Paul Cézanne, whose extensive thematic treatment of bathers or figures positioned against a landscape also matured in Mueller’s work. In classic modernism this was, in fact, cultivated only by Mueller with such intense dedication. He sought to achieve a simplification of the classic principles of order by depicting corporeality rigorously, as seen here in ›Vier Akte am Wasser‹ (Four Nudes at the Water), thus underscoring the various gestures of sitting, squatting, or standing in a landscape, while bathing, or when flirting beneath trees. The artist supported this theoretical approach by reducing the motif to restrained coloring.

Rarely has there been an artist who has adhered to his motif selection and painting style more steadfastly than Otto Mueller. Only over the years starting in 1910, did hee gingerly adapt his style once he had become a member of the Brücke group. Accompanying him on this path were fellow artists as role models, such as Paul Cézanne, whose extensive thematic treatment of bathers or figures positioned against a landscape also matured in Mueller’s work. In classic modernism this was, in fact, cultivated only by Mueller with such intense dedication. He sought to achieve a simplification of the classic principles of order by depicting corporeality rigorously, as seen here in ›Vier Akte am Wasser‹ (Four Nudes at the Water), thus underscoring the various gestures of sitting, squatting, or standing in a landscape, while bathing, or when flirting beneath trees. The artist supported this theoretical approach by reducing the motif to restrained coloring.